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MH 13s look for strong showing at World Series

Neal Denton, Baxter Bulletin
Published 9:47 p.m. CT Aug. 3, 2018

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Mountain Home's Dillon Drewry catches a throw during a recent practice at McClain Park. The 13-year-olds are hosting the Babe Ruth World Series in Mountain Home from Aug. 9-16.(Photo: Neal Denton/The Baxter Bulletin)Buy Photo

Mountain Home’s 13-year-old baseball team that will be hosting the Babe Ruth World Series from Aug. 9-16 will look to build on the postseason runs it has made over the past several years.

The team will be playing in its third World Series in four years when it takes the field Aug. 9, with all three of those tournaments located close to Mountain Home.

The team went to the 10-year-old World Series three years ago in Jonesboro, but it lost all four of its games.

The group went to the 12-year-old World Series in Branson, Mo., last year and advanced out of pool play and even won a game in bracket play before being eliminated.

“We’ve already been twice, so I think we have a better feeling about how the competition is,” Dillon Drewry said, “and we can improve on it more this year than the past two years.”

Since the team automatically qualifies for the World Series as the host, it doesn’t have to win a regional tournament, but that also means it isn’t playing any tournaments and is practicing frequently to make sure it doesn’t get rusty.

“You lose a bit of competitive nature,” coach Tom Czanstkowski said. “One of the advantages, at this age, is those other regionals are going on (two weeks before). As soon as those end, those teams have only one week to get here. They’re not really going to have time to practice. They’ll have to raise money, get packed and travel here. We, being here, will get to practice on the field at the same time we’ll be playing.”

The team will also have an advantage of knowing its ballpark, after having practiced on it for several weeks before the Series starts.

“We’ll have the advantage there,” Ky Bickford said, “because some fields aren’t that great that we play on, and we have gotten a lot better fielding ground balls. The turf (at McClain Park) makes it look really easy — no more bad hops.”

The tournament will have two five-team pools. Every team will play four pool games over the first five days, so each team gets one day off during pool play to rest its pitching.

“We have six guys in our pitching rotation,” Czanstkowski said. “It depends on the pitch-count rules and what’s going on in the games. We have four who we call starters. We play three days in a row, have a day off, then play one more game. It works out well for us, because that last game is usually very important. We should have three or four guys ready for that last game. We lucked out to get that draw.”

Czanstkowski believes the squad has the pitching depth to make it through the eight-day tournament.

“This group, we’ve coached the majority of them since they were 7 or 8 years old," he said. "Pitching has always been one of their strengths. If they’ll just come out and throw strikes, I think we’ll have a chance to be in every ball game. You can’t be walking three guys an inning, or your pitch count will get up there really quick. When you have to burn three or four pitchers per game, it’s tough.”

Not only do 13-year-olds play on a much larger field than when they were 12, but games are now seven innings instead of six. and the mound is now an official 60 feet, 6 inches.

Mountain Home's players say they are adapting well to the changes.

“It wasn’t much of a change,” Bickford said. “Pitching-wise, your velocity is less, it was easier to hit. The off-speed was a lot better because it had more time to break. The bases, you couldn’t beat out like a hit to shortstop.”

Last year, the team was playing on 70-foot bases instead of 90.

“The runners, it takes a lot more time for them to get down to a base,” Reece Ducker said. “So, the fielders have more time.”

The players will be playing on an outfield that is almost twice as big as what they played on last season.

“The mound is a change because you can’t blow batters away with a fastball,” Jacob Czanstkowski said. “You have to have a strategy and hit your spots. The outfield is a big difference, if you hit it past a guy, you have a triple and if you’re fast, a home run. You have to hit your cuts. There’s a lot of foul territory also.”

The field size has changed several strategies for the team.

“From the age of 12 to 13 or 14, they all grow so differently," Tom Czanstkowski said. "Some of them are able to adapt a little easier with size, strength and arm capability. Some struggle early, but come along eventually. We have our two strongest arms at short and second. We’ve hit balls to the fence, in the gaps, and we shouldn’t need double-cuts. If our outfielders can get them the ball, they can get it to any base they need to.”